August 3, 2018 (Friday)
Today marks the 48th anniversary of Hurricane Celia. According to some people, its gusts north of Aransas Pass measured 200 miles per hour. It was remembered as the “last big and powerful storm” we had experienced for 47 years..until Harvey last year.
Shipwrecks around the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico are still the objects of search parties seeking treasure. The hurricanes were around here long before there was any such thing as a weather bureau to record facts about them.
Hurricanes have been pounding the Gulf Coast for thousands of years or longer, but the first one noted in history hit Mobile Bay in 830 A.D., 1188 years ago. Hurricanes first received names in 1950, and male names began in 1979.
When my family and I moved to Rockport in 1964, many people talked about Carla in 1961, and most people knew many facts about the September 14, 1919 storm, which brought such a strong surge that downtown buildings still display a watermark from the flooding. The eye of that storm came in at Baffin Bay and spread death and destruction many miles up the coast, including Rockport, where 40 people died. Officially, 287 died In Corpus Christi, but estimates run from 600 to 1000 dead. Bodies from North Beach were found at Calallen, and dead bodies were stacked by the Federal Courthouse in Corpus. Many were swept out to sea, then their bodies were washed ashore, covered with oil and tar.
There have been many more storms other than these, but these were among the worst to strike the Texas coast.
I have experienced several through the years. My first memory is of a September, 1940 storm in Houston. A few years later another with winds well over 100 mph. I recall driving home past a swollen San Jacinto River, aftermath of a hurricane, sometime during my 1949-1953 college years.
Hurricane Beulah (1967) spawned floods and tornadoes; Texas was one big lake South of San Antonio all the way past the Rio Grande River. We left town and when we drove back up FM 1069 north of Aransas Pass, we tried to keep from creating wakes that raised water levels in flooded homes. In 1980, Allen hit and my family and I went to San Antonio. While there we saw Xanadu, a movie starring Gene Kelley and Olivia Newton-John. After retiring in Rockport, I moved to a church in Houston and followed the news through Katrina, Rita and Ike, which I thought would blow my house away throughout the long night.
There have been several tropical storms and depressions with buckets of rain and flooding. I’m familiar with experiences of storms. One would think I would leave town when they come, but I stayed through Celia and Harvey. Would someone please tell me why I did that? Wanda and I stayed here in September, 1988, when Gilbert, said to be the most powerful storm ever in this hemisphere, killer of hundreds in Jamaica and Mexico, was forecast to hit this part of the coast. It went straight to Mexico instead. Why would I challenge such a fierce storm? As Forest Gump says, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
We should never forget the storm that hit Texas 118 years ago. It could happen again.
The 1900 Galveston Hurricane was a Category 4 storm that slammed into the city on Sept. 8, 1900, with top winds over 135 mph, according to NOAA. It’s widely regarded as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. An estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people were killed by the storm, and more than 3,600 buildings in Galveston were destroyed — all within a few hours. The storm produced a 15-foot storm surge that inundated most of Galveston Island and the city itself.